Power-efficient grating-based scanning optical delay line: time-domain configuration

A power-efficient, grating-based, time-domain rapid scanning optical delay line (TD-RSOD) suitable for optical coherence tomography (OCT) is presented. The 6 dB power efficiency of this TD-RSOD over conventional double-pass Fourierdomain RSOD (FD-RSOD) provides approximately 4 dB SNR advantage in a typical balanced-detection OCT. The scanning performance of TD-RSOD is comparable to that of FD-RSOD.